Firefly as a New Tribal Enterprise

POSTED BY: SergeantX
UPDATED: Thursday, October 16, 2003 05:27
VIEWED: 11276
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AEROPAX

Saturday, September 6, 2003 4:54 AM

I guess I'll use my first post to steer this thread back to the beginning. Hi I'm Pax, Fly-Fan and student of Daniel Quinn. I have to say that FF as good as it is, does not strike me as relating to Quinns teachings in any really meaningful way. The crew is a tribe of course and Quinn promotes tribalism, but tribalism is only a suggestion from Quinn as a better way to live, not a core belief in his teachings. Remember he also says there is no one right way to live. So superficially you can draw a corrolation, but I don't see it going any deeper than that.

For those who have not read Quinn, his teachings are really very simple. We are not the masters of the Earth, we are a part of it. We may compete to the best of our ability, but not deny other beings on the planet the chance to evolve. His second point is that we have not as humans stopped evolving, man is not the final end to all creation, there is more to come. We have taken ourselves out of the evolutionary chain and will eventually pay the ultimate price.

2 pretty simple statements that are hard to accept at first becase we have been so conditioned believe that there must be some complex answer to our problems. Anyway, if you're interested, read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and enjoy, whether you agree or not, its a great story. An education wrapped in fiction, that will at first have you saying OMG how obvious, then leave you scrambling to figure out how to change yourself and others to turn things around, then finally realise that you are already changed and need not do anything drastic. Having been shown what is what, you will make the right choices and follow your own path.

Hope this all didn't sound to cult like, of course if you have read Quinn you would know that cults aren't always bad things. Anyway, my 2 cents. Ismael.com and Ishcon.org are 2 good places to learn more about Quinn.

Pax
Tulsa, OK
"Once more unto the breach"

ALIENZOOKEEPER

Saturday, September 6, 2003 5:16 AM

Shame on you Drakon for egging the socialist on!

I've seen this sort of thing a lot over the years & all i can say is that people never learn, just keep making the same mistakes in new ways.

As far as the original topic goes, i agree with it. People seem to live best in smaller groups, looking after their own interests. Problem is, we don't have the luxury of living that way. We need specialists, which means large populations & at least some kind of central government.

vince

DRAKON

Saturday, September 6, 2003 8:17 AM

Okay, looking over this, I am not getting you at all. Either the businesses are created and run by private individuals, automotously, or the government either runs the business itself, (or regulates it to the point where it become a difference that makes no difference.)

If you let private individual run their own companies as they see fit, well, you get capitalism. If you run it by government regulation and management, you don't. There are really only two choices here, either you make your own decisions on how you conduct your business or someone else decides for you.

[BTW: you might want to drop the "Texas cowboy' line. It has kind of a snobbish quality that some blue collar types might find offensive and figure you are simply another elitist not worth listening to.]

And again, you seem to not understand just what profits tell you. It means that you are doing something wrong, if you are not making a profit. It means the market, meaning the individual decisions of the entire population have judged that your product is not an effective use of resources.

We measure value in money, despite the fact that value is kind of an individual thing. It costs to produce a medicine, or bring a new technology to market. While supply is tangible, anyone can count the number of widgets in the warehouse, demand is a bit harder to determine ahead of time. Demand, like value will differ from individual to individual. It is risky bringing a new product to market in itself, to say nothing of potential liability lawsuits waiting for you.

It costs to produce, in time, effort and resources (raw material). Again, we can measure all these in money, for convience. The price you charge for your product, or rather the price you get for your product is a measure of how valuable your product is to the market. The difference between the cost of resources used and the price of the finished good, the profit, tells you how much you have changed the value of those raw materials. It tells you how effective you are at turning a low value resource into a high value good, of turning something that is not worth much, into something that is (hopefully) highly desirable, useful, to the population at large.

If you are not making a profit, this means you are taking things of little value to the population and making them even less desirable. It also means that soon, you will run out of resources, money, to keep your business going. Your business will whither and die, and other businesses will step in, buy those resources you were buying, and try to make goods that are more valuable than you did.

In other words, economic efficiency is preserved, because one can look at the profits a company creates and determine which businesses are doing a good job with the resources they use, and which are not. Ineffecient businesses die out, efficient businesses expand and grow, creating more wealth for more people. It sounds Darwinian, and in fact it is. But it is the most effective way we have ever come up with of providing the most wealth for the most people.

[Perhaps that is the point you find so distasteful, the Darwinian aspect of the market?]

If folks are not producing medicines, or cars that drive themselves, because there is no profit in it, that should tell you something about the project. That it is not an efficient allocation of resources, that can be used more efficiently and effectively elsewhere. It means that people will not pay enough to cover the costs. It means before long, someone has to stop eating, just to keep these projects going.

Unprofitable enterprises consume wealth, and don't create enough to keep going, or even expand. Wealth is not like matter or energy, it can be created and destroyed. Destroying wealth is like burning your crops. An unprofitable business is like locust, it has to eat, it has to consume resources. It either creates value for those resources, or it must consume valuable things from elsewhere.

"That is why everyone get the same needs for free, and the same pay for goods that they might want."

The

DRAKON

Saturday, September 6, 2003 8:36 AM

"Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda.

A Communist society won't work if human beings are in charge of it. Been tried. Utopia requires an omniscient and omnipotent dictator who is absolutely uncorruptable.

--Anthony"

Utopia is probably the most aptly named concept ever invented. It is a greek word, mean "no where"

"my kind of stupid"

DRAKON

Saturday, September 6, 2003 8:56 AM

I am sorry, what can I say. Whenever I see this kind of idea pop up time and time again, I have to fight it. Enough people have died in the search for socialist utopia already. We don't need more dead people.

I like what Heinlein said about specialization. Its for insects.

"my kind of stupid"

RITA

Sunday, September 7, 2003 2:19 AM

Hey there Bluehoot i would love to know what someone of your trade and education thinks about Geneticaly Modified crops being grown in the open air? OOOOOOHhhhhhhhhh i so hope you see this and respond to it because i am awfully concerned about this very contentious subject

BLUEHOOT

Sunday, September 7, 2003 10:45 PM

Rita

I'll start a new thread just for the GMO subject.

Edit: since its not Firefly related I'll also go put it in Talk Story.

RITA

Tuesday, September 9, 2003 9:15 PM

HEY BLUEHOOT how do i log on to talk story email me at ritakaren@earthlink.net

LORASAFREAK

Tuesday, October 14, 2003 7:04 AM

Ok,

I have to agree with some of the others that have responded and I would like to expand upon this.

1. Agriculture : agriculture is the foundation of civilization. A little place called Mesopotamea is what is thought to be the hearth of human civilization as we know it. This sedate lifestyle of the agricultural society as opposed to the hunter gatherer societies, allowed for one important feature that has been crucial to our development. Security. This security allowed for development of knowledge. At first basic things such as gauging floods and their affects on crops to philosophy and the modern science of today, ie without these stable and secure communities nothing that we take for granted would exist as it does today.

2. Tribalism, while it sounds great, it has many flaws, as testified by the last known segment of the human population to participate in this, the Inuit. Their societies were corrupt and harsh. It was not simply something that people could adjust to. Food becomes the main determining factor. It was not uncommon to kill children when times got rough. Their societies had a limited growth because of the area required to provide them with adequate resources, which led to another problem. Isolation. This isolation meant that there was a limited gene pool. This caused many recessive and disadvantageous genes to permeate through the generations. Tribalism in a less harsh environment would incorporate many of the same principles, because it always comes down to the same ecological principal, there are only so much resources, and therefore there will always exist competition.

3. Competition. Competition in the natural world exists to bring balance to an ecosystem, or for the individual, survival. The type of competition that we experience is more of a success/failure type, humans strive to achieve, and as such have shown that they require dominance, over nature, over each other, etc... This competition would translate into competition between tribes. Tribalism would not necessarily mean that we would live simpler lives, we would perhaps live different lives, but our sense of competition would be "reset" to survival mechanisms.

The world is not a happy wonderful place that will give us all that we need if we just ask and be patient. The world/nature is harsh and full of competition, we are just one of the many that exist within that balance. I don't think that we would live a simpler life if we lived in tribes, our focus may shift, but we will always remain in competition, whether it's for success or survival. Maybe I'm off base here, but I'd like to hear what you have to say.

ARCHER

Tuesday, October 14, 2003 10:58 AM

Sarge Sarge Sarge... why didn't you tell me about this beautiful thread that ran in my absence? Tsk. You started a beauty here.

Drakon, I don't know which is the greater pleasure... watching you ably argue positions I agree with, or engaging in a mind-expanding debate with you.

Now to pick a few nits with the good Sergeant...

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:

I will however try to give you a little better idea why the tribal alternative is preferred from Quinn's point of view. One of the biggest problems with our kind of civilization is that it is so expansionist by nature. It generates a population pressure that tends to, and in fact requires, a continued outward expansion. Not only is does it expand geographically but culturally, as it is fundamentally incompatible with most other culture styles. (imagine a major nomadic culture co-existing with an agriculturally based one)

Essentially the culture operates as a type of "Ponzi scheme"(my analogy), requiring more and more land and workers to support its continued expansion. But eventually the system outstrips its base, offering less and less to the base population that makes up its foundation. It has taken a lot time for this to happen, at least in human terms. Its been a short while from evolution's point of view. Quinn's conclusion is that the current civilization model is just not sustainable and will fall away as the human race evolves, assuming we do survive.

Civilization being expansionist by nature is a function of evolution. Either a society grows, or it becomes stagnant and gets overtaken. History is full of examples of peaceful peoples who lived in what amounted to cultural stasis, and they tend to get swallowed in the face of dynamic cultures.

In evolutionary terms, there is a dynamic known as the Red Queen scenario, I believe, that essentially states that 'you run as fast as you can just to stay in place.' The effect is that species grow, adapt, and evolve on a constant basis just to maintain their niche. Likewise with cultures, which have to keep adapting and evolving in order to not be subsumed by newer forms of civilization.

Beyond our own intra-specie-ist concerns, the long-term survivability of the human race dictates that we need to expand, beyond this planet at the very least, and to the stars ASAP. I'd be much happier with the state of affairs if I had some idea that in a few generations there'll be plenty of people not hanging around this rock waiting for the next dinosaur killer or comet chunk to come a'knockin'.

As for the people at the continual growth of the cultural machine requiring more labor, the latest economic complaint has been the continued growth of productivity lessening the need for low-end jobs. In America, the bottom of the pyramid is not getting less as the top gets more, wealth is growing continually at all levels. (Drakon spoke on this extensively and eloquently in the Iraq thread.) I'm not accusing you of making the statement, but the whole 'Rich get richer and the poor get poorer' line of thinking makes me want to retch. Here in America, I've known more than one 'have-not' coming at me with that line of thinking, while living in a house with two TVs.

You've been on to me to read the books, Sarge, and I swear upon the graves of my dishonorable (and occasionally honorable) ancestors that I'll check for 'em next time I hit the Barnes & Noble.

Regards to all.

We don't know who put this cup of life into our hands. But when we go our bones will bake upon the burning sands. 'Cause we walk but once among the living, so no regrets and no forgiving- it's hard to dance when you're down upon your knees. And these are dark days indeed.

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